Vote for Bergelmir
by ughiguess
Summary: When Loki is given the task of ruling Jotunheim, he decides that giving them a democracy might be a better idea, but knowing little about it he needs some help from someone with a political science background and he knows just where to find her. Set after The Avengers but not taking Thor 2 into account. Rating is for the later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This is an updated, and hopefully grammatically corrected, version of my fic first published over at ao3. It is set after the Avengers but doesn't take Thor 2 into account. Oh and Phil is alive, because I like him; if it bothers you just picture another government suit type (since he's barely in this anyway). Please review if you like it!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything Marvel related. I do this for fun, please don't sue me.

One month ago, Loki son of Laufey, son of Odin, prisoner of Asgard, had stood before the All Father and listened, incredulous, to the sentence being passed on him. After having tried to take over the earth, it seemed Odin wished to punish him in an uncharacteristically ironic fashion. He'd given Loki the throne he seemed to want so badly. Unfortunately, that throne was on Jotunheim and it came with a lot of strings attached. He'd been ordered to take control of Jotunn society, the army, economy, and whatever else he could, in order to re-establish order and peace with the goal of subduing the Jotunns so they would no longer be a threat to Asgard. After four long weeks of watching heads roll (literally) as cabals plotted and his edicts were undermined, he'd had about enough. He was back now, before the All Father, to discuss a change in tactics.

"Why do the Jotunns need a king?" He asked, semi-rhetorically.

Odin was taken aback, _what a ridiculous question_ , his look seemed to say. He paused for some time before saying, "What do you mean by that?"

"Why a king? A monarchy? A strong leader to hold them together? Do you forget that I spent almost a year on Midgard? I learned much there. I learned one thing above all others. Let me give the Jotunns governance that will ensure they never gather themselves to rise against us. Governance that will ensure Jotunheim remains a factious, petty realm with no man to organize and incite it to our defeat. Let me give them a terrible gift, All Father. Let me give them democracy."

Odin sank back in his throne stunned to his very bones. He had often pondered his second son, and thought that all his considerable wit was only put towards jests or cruelties, but this was something else. This was oddly brilliant in a twisted way that fit his son like a suit of fine armor. It was risky, potentially chaos inducing. It came out of a pessimistic streak that had been so strong in Loki of late. He thought long before responding. "I realize I had not given you many strict guidelines as to your solution for Jotunheim, but this is not what I had in mind," He finally said.

"I realize that. I knew you probably wouldn't approve. But I saw it work perfectly on Midgard in that it works _disastrously_." Loki was smiling now, not particularly pleasantly. "I believe that even if they could match us in advanced weaponry and other technologies, the Midgardians would never be able to attack Asgard simply because all of them would never be able to agree on it. They have too many other things distracting them, chief among which seems to be outrageous scandals involving their leaders. Let me take some time to devise a system of democratic rule and I'll go back to Jotunheim and sell it to them as a real chance at freedom."

"Do you think you could devise a system of government alone?" asked Odin. "I grant you spent some time on Midgard, but you know little about the intricacies of this new method and it is not like you to ask for help."

"I know just the person for the job."

In a tiny office in a converted diner in Puente Antiguo, Darcy Lewis found herself on the phone saying, "Yes… yes she's gone for at least a week... Yeah, I get that… I know…Well, I mean Jane's left me a lot of stuff…Yeah, I know it's more my field…Okay, okay. I just worry about the whole 'tried to take over the world thing.' …Oh. No powers at the moment?...Hmm. Well, okay. When's the flight?"

As soon as she hung up, she allowed herself to grin almost maniacally. This was going to look EPIC on her resume, and just maybe earn her some kind of Asgardian Nobel peace prize.


	2. Chapter 2

Darcy Lewis leaned against the side of a Ford Taurus that had a dent in it as if it had been kicked by horse. She was parked at the edge of an airstrip, beside a shabby looking shed. Shabby looking, because it was meant to deter the curious. It was actually the entrance to an underground control center, a small outpost of SHIELD. Agent Jones, if that really was his name, had explained it all to Darcy and replied to her skepticism by saying, "No, it isn't really like the Ministry of Magic." Darcy had just nodded and said, "Sure."

When a high tech looking jet landed, using an eerie hovering technology that seemed to have been stolen from seagulls, Darcy got a first look at her new "co-worker." Coulson had said to think of him as a client, as if she had her own consulting firm, and that its job was coming up with governments for foreign countries. She had pointed out that if Loki were a customer then he'd be paying her, which would make him her boss. And Coulson responded by reminding her that no one was paying her for anything other than a stipend for the god's room and board. They had called it a draw at "co-workers."

As he stepped off the plane and down the gangway, she was surprised to find Loki not in his Asgardian finery but in black dress pants and a dark button down shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows in deference to the heat. He was shielding his eyes from the sun as he came toward her, an agent trailing after him laden with bags Loki had obviously assumed someone else would carry. She was surprised to find herself drawn to him somewhat, in these clothes, he looked like the kind of guy she was attracted to on campus.

"What is this conveyance? It's pathetic," he said, drawing near and surveying the Taurus with disgust.

 _Yep_ , she thought, _and just like those guys, he's an asshole_.

"Hello to you too," said Darcy, sarcastically. "I'm Darcy Lewis, your political consultant? You requested me."

"I remember," he said in a tone that suggested she was a bit dim. "I am Loki," he said, taking her proffered hand. He turned it, and air kissed the back perfunctorily.

"Uh… Right," she said, pulling her hand away as soon as possible. "You can put those in the trunk," she said to the agent, popping it with her key fob. She turned back to Loki and said, "This _conveyan_ ce is all we could afford, _someone_ blew the last one up when he sent a Transformer to destroy the town," using air quotes where necessary.

Meanwhile, agent Coulson had exited the plane and now approached Darcy. "Here, I got you some supplies that you may find necessary. Don't worry about security, we'll take care of that. You're in charge, but an agent is on call at all times." He handed her a small plastic case with a handle.

"There had better be a gun in here," she said.

"No gun. He's not dangerous," replied Coulson, turning to Loki and saying, "Are you?" It came out smug, or as smug as a government agent could ever sound.

Loki just glared.

The tension was suddenly heavy in the air and Darcy couldn't stand it much longer. "Right, well… We have kind of a long drive, so why don't you get in the car and we'll be on our way."

She wrapped up with Coulson as Loki got into the passenger side, surprisingly adept for an alien. She got in and they started off. The jet was already hovering by the time she'd pulled onto the dirt path that led from the main road to the airstrip, leaving only dust as evidence it had ever been there.

"I'm hungry," Loki grumbled, not five minutes into the drive.

"That I'm totally prepared for, I know how much you muscly Asgardian types eat. I got protein rich goodness, there's some beef jerky, power bars and nuts in my bag. It's behind your seat."

He just sat there petulantly.

"What are you waiting for? It better not be for me to get it for you, first of all I'm driving and second you're not being waited on here, let's get that straight right now."

"Fine," he huffed and reached back to grab it. He spent some time going through the pockets, finding the power bars first. He munched one experimentally and continued to rifle.

Darcy nearly turned the car over when he pulled out the next item from her bag. She could feel her face reddening. She'd totally forgotten leaving her vibrator in an inside pocket after a weekend trip some months back. The look on Loki's face was nonplussed, as if he genuinely didn't know what on Midgard he was seeing.

"What is this? It's rather phallic, don't you think? What is its use, ceremonial, ritual?"

"Uh...recreational?" Her voice went up a bit toward the end of the word as her lips curled into a wince.

"Recreational?" He said, inexplicably (in her opinion) still seemingly confused. He focused his gaze on her, looking her up and down. She tossed a questioning glance sideways at him before refocusing on her driving. This was more than mortifying. Her first day on the job, within ten minutes of meeting her co-worker, and already he would think she was a lonely, pathetic-

"I don't understand. Surely _you_ wouldn't have any trouble getting your hands on the real thing?"

It was lucky they were on a lonely stretch of straight highway so typical to New Mexico because she was well into the other lane before she recovered enough to even notice her hands clenching the wheel with white knuckles.

Or maybe he wouldn't.

"You know what," she said, "I think it's better if we don't talk. I need to concentrate on my driving." _He's not sexy,_ she thought to herself. _He did not just look at me in sexy way because he's not sexy… he's… Eurotrashy, that's not sexy. Definitely Eurotrashy._


	3. Chapter 3

"Alright," said Darcy as soon as she had ushered Loki inside the lab. She started setting things out while he dropped his bags in the middle of the floor. "We're running out of daylight so I think I'll show you around later. First things first, we have to sit you down and make you watch that Nazi episode of _Star Trek_ so you know what _not_ to do." She took her laptop to the coffee table and pulled him over, lightly forcing him onto the couch with her hands on his shoulders. He stiffened a bit as she did it and looked at the device apprehensively. "It's only like an hour long, I'm gonna go to the library for a few books, and I'll bring us back some dinner." Tossing him a legal pad and a ball point pen before grabbing her giant purse, she headed for the door. "Enjoy," she said.

"Is that all? You trust me to stay here?" he asked, turning around to look at her, incredulous.

"Dude, you can't really go anywhere. Without magic, you're stranded in this town and trust me, I'd find you, there's like three places to hide." The familiar surroundings emboldening her, she added, "I can't even be bothered to cuff you to the couch."

"Is that something you're into?" he asked with a quirk of his lips. There it was, that look again, the one he'd given her in the car. The one that made it seem like he was inches from her rather than halfway across the room. She turned around, stalked out and slammed the door behind her.

She was back just as the credits rolled and set three pizza boxes down on a table. She busied herself about getting plates, napkins, and soda from the kitchen. Smelling the pepperoni, Loki had already opened a box by the time she got back. They sat down together and began a slightly awkward evening meal.

"Right. So what did we learn?" Darcy asked, desperate to end the silence. Loki quirked an eyebrow. She couldn't figure out if he normally did that or if he was answering her question with a Spock impression. Before she had decided he spoke.

"That lanky, green aliens should never be allowed to go shirtless?"

Darcy gave a snort of laughter. "Other than that homoeroticism was alive and well on 1960s television." He ignored this.

"Alright, well… I learned that we shouldn't try to make the Jotunns a system that works _too_ well. But I already knew that. That's why I'm here. To find out _how_ ," he said, taking a long drink of his Pepsi and then eyeing it with disdain. "Also, the video program seemed to suggest that installing an arbitrary form of government on a foreign people is a bad idea."

"Yeah, but that's a rule in the _Star Trek_ world. They call it the Prime Directive: you're not supposed to interfere with the workings of other planets. We're gonna be ignoring that."

They were quiet for a little longer, Loki picking off the bits of the pizza he didn't like and Darcy watching him out of the corner of her eye for any sudden movements. He was a bit strange. Much quieter than Thor had been, and he didn't ask so many questions, but then again, Loki had been to Earth before and for quite a long stay. Something had been perplexing to her ever since she got than phone call from Coulson yesterday afternoon, and now seemed as good a time as any to get some answers.

"How did you pick me for this anyway? I didn't think you knew I existed." She said. He looked her in the eye and smiled. It wasn't completely unpleasant… _Eurotrash. Remember, libido?_

"Darcy Lewis exhibits none of the qualities of a serious scientific researcher," he began, sounding distinctly like a dictionary. "She is irreverent and impulsive, refuses to undertake the study necessary to help with Dr. Foster's research. She maintains an inexplicable sense of priorities, treating everyone and everything with equal disrespect. She comes from the field of political science however, and is insightful and well versed in that discipline," he finished, looking pleased with himself. "Erik Selvig's notes, from his lab journal."

"Get out! He said all that about me?" She beamed. "How do I know you aren't making that up?"

"I could recite it in the original Swedish, I suppose," he said, going back to his pizza.

She didn't know that that would prove anything, but it did sound like Erik. "Wait. Hold up. You speak Swedish?"

"I speak all the languages of this realm." She waited for further explanation but none seemed to be coming.

"So, while you're here, do you think you could help me with a term paper I'm writing? A lot of great source material for it is in Russian but I can't use it without translations."

"We'll see," he said, picking up his Pepsi with some apprehension.

After dinner, Darcy showed him around the lab and the living quarters. Jane slept in the trailer and hadn't ever considered anything but the science stuff. Darcy's first task as her intern had been self-directed. She had taken it upon herself to make the diner/lab a more comfortable place to be, getting some furniture from the local Goodwill and setting up the kitchen. She was particularly proud of having rigged the dishwasher's station into a shower stall. There was a manager's office she had cleaned out to use as a bedroom and had installed an air mattress. "That is my room and no you cannot go in there," she had said, mindful of what had happened in the car. There was also a back room where the walk-in freezers used to be where she had set up a space for Erik when he came out last year. It seemed unfair that the man who was to be occupying that room now was the man who had driven Erik insane.

As she showed him around she started to think about the things he had done. Dressed as he was and without his powers, he seemed so much more subdued than he had been in the brief flashes of him she had seen on the news. They came to the end of the tour in the narrow hallway where the makeshift bedrooms were and she got up the nerve to ask him something else that had been worrying her which suddenly seemed very relevant, given that she'd locked herself in for the night with a mass murderer.

While he was surveying the store room from its doorway she asked, "What did Coulson mean when he said you weren't dangerous?"

Loki turned around and looked at her square in the eye. "He meant, to you. I'm not dangerous to you. Not that I'm not dangerous." He looked her up and down with his eyes narrowed. "Let's get that straight, right now," he finished, echoing her words from earlier in the car. She felt her chest seize in an unpleasant way. It must have shown on her face because he dropped his intense expression and plastered on a friendly, handsome smile. It was unnerving. A moment ago, he had seemed tired and somewhat distracted, but now he was very alive indeed.

"Okay, well. I'm pretty beat and I bet you have jetlag from Asgard so I think we should turn in for the night. Tomorrow maybe you can start by telling me about Jotunheim and I'll start by telling you how we do things here in America." She was nervous now and rambling and didn't really know what else to say. They were close together in the hallway which was also making her a bit leery. "Well, goodnight." She said, quickly going into her room and closing the door behind her. She locked it, hoping he couldn't hear the force or speed with which she did so.


	4. Chapter 4

Darcy came in to the lab the next morning ready to set up at the table for taking notes and making charts. She was surprised to find Loki already there, and against all odds, nursing a cup of coffee. She backtracked and checked the kitchen. Of course he hadn't made enough for her. She set up the machine and went back to the table. "Morning," she said, sitting down.

He had his legal pad out and was writing something. It was tilted back though and she couldn't see what. He kept writing, finishing a sentence, and said, "Good Morning. Did you still want to start with an overview of Jotunheim?"

"Uh, yeah, sure." She was again surprised. He was very business-like and efficient this morning. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that he was still wearing yesterday's clothes. "Let's get to it," she said.

They spent the morning talking about Jotunheim. She noticed he never once mentioned exactly what he had been doing there. It seemed like he had seen a lot of stuff first hand though, having more than textbook sort of knowledge. Occasionally, she asked a question like, "What kind of religion do they have? It better not all be the same one, because that limits us significantly in sowing the seeds of unrest." And, "Eventually, we're going to have to introduce money into the system. What's the currency on Jotunheim?" His reply, "As far as I could tell? Goat's heads," had called a stop to her interruptions.

He continued with his lecture until well past noon. It was all fascinating to hear and not only for the information. His lecturing voice had something about it that set her nerves alight. It turned out that the Jotunns were not the one-size-fits-all baddies Erik's little book had made them seem. They had their own societal laws and rules just like any other culture and none seemed to be any whackier than anything Darcy had read in science fiction, just slightly primitive and violent for the most part.

After a late lunch, they switched to talking about Earth and it was Darcy's turn to lecture. She ran through the three branches of government and talked about voting and the electoral college, none of which seemed to make any more sense to Loki than it made to the average college student. She talked about Western values and ideals a little as well, his take on them was not very encouraging. At one point he interrupted, saying, "You say free speech is essential. It seems to me that the real purpose of having it codified into law is that everyone has to at least think that they can say whatever they want. It really just keeps them complacent and thankful that they have at least one right, so they can never be all that angry as long as they can compare themselves to those in less fortunate countries." She knew that didn't sound quite right, but wasn't sure how to counter it.

He made relatively few comments overall, but the ones he did were slightly unsettling. When she was talking about global law he said, "You know, originally I had thought to conduct my operation from the UN building, but quickly realized no one pays any attention to it." She didn't know what to say to that either.

She was beginning to think Loki was feeling a little down. She didn't know much about his personality, really, but the man she had seen on the news had had a swagger totally different to this man's. There were still traces of him, in the way he sometimes smirked evilly and looked her straight in the eye in a most disturbing manner, but it was almost like those looks were a mask he put on when he needed to. Most of the time, he was quiet and thoughtful. He didn't mope, exactly; and he didn't watch the ground like depressed people often did, but he never quite met her eye (when he wasn't flirting to put her off base or glaring to reassert his dominance, but those moments tended to pass quickly). This feeling was confirmed around eight o'clock that evening. They had switched from coffee to red wine and were sitting in the living area talking about congress. Loki was lounging on the couch, his legal pad face down beside him.

"That's senators, house is every two years, staggered. That's what we should do on Jotunheim," she was explaining as she paced in front of the coffee table.

"That makes no sense, you'd always have some old and some new people at all times." He said, taking a thoughtful sip of his wine. "There would be no chance for complete regime change and the accompanying paradigm shifts that drive social change."

"Dude, paradigm shifts and social change? That's what the internet is for." She sank into the armchair and looked at him, sideways. "What happened to you? Is your heart even in this? Get your head back in the game, eyeball thief!"

"That was one time!" he said, in the disgruntled manner befitting a postal worker. He sighed deeply and considered for a moment. The look on his face said that he had decided something and he said, "If you must know, I am feeling a little out of sorts without my powers. I can't stand the thought of being trapped here."

"Gee, thanks" said Darcy.

"It has nothing to do with you!" he snapped. But he softened and continued, "And I'll rip your tongue out if you ever tell anyone I said so, but I don't feel like myself. Without magic, what am I?" The way he was looking at her, it seemed like he wasn't being rhetorical. He was acting oddly open and vulnerable, the wine must have been affecting his mortal form.

"It sounds like your magic is the source of all your self-esteem. I don't think that's very healthy." She said, gently, somewhat afraid of this sad, dispirited Loki. "You've got other things going for you, I'm sure." He gave her a skeptical look. "You're a space prince, that's something."

"Not anymore. Odin had put me in the dungeons before sending me to Jotunheim. I can't stop thinking that he'll just send me back to my cell when I fail at this impossible task," he said, his gaze falling somewhere around his knees.

"Seriously? Buck up, man," She said. Not sure that she should be providing free counseling to the mass murderous, she felt a little weird about trying to pick his spirits up. "Hey," she said, slapping him on the knee so that he looked up at her. "Put your all into this and make it work. Prove you can build something, not just destroy it. Then, maybe Odin will think twice about sending you back to God-Jail. And this no-magic thing, it's only temporary."

The look on his face said 'not-bloody-likely,' but he just sighed and slumped further into the couch. He continued, "You could never understand, mortal. You've never had access to magic. That spark is gone, and I am not myself without it."

"You want a spark, huh?" she said, slyly. "I could always tase you."

He gave her an annoyed look, but she was sure she'd caught him smiling a little.


	5. Chapter 5

Two days later, Loki was on a steady diet of beef jerky, beer, coffee, and Daily Show reruns. He'd complained so much about the heavily processed bread that she gave up trying to talk him into sandwiches. He hated Pepsi and had insisted that 'ale' was healthier anyway. She decided it wasn't worth arguing over and made a note to charge SHEILD more. Overall, Loki seemed to be feeling a little better after her pep talk. There was more of a spring in his step and he at least changed clothes every day. She noticed he kept the legal pad with him at all times, bringing it out frequently to jot down notes, but he wouldn't let her see any of them.

They had started mapping out a constitution for the Jotunns but it was slow going. Apparently, there had never been anything but a hereditary monarchy on Jotunheim, so elections were bound to cause difficulty. "They can't have panel debates," Loki had said, "They'll just get angry and tear each other's heads off." She had snorted, "Remind me to explain the Neilsen ratings to you." She reminded him that elections were the best way to distract the Jotunn leaders from attacking Asgard, by allowing them a regularly occurring public forum in which to attack each other, metaphorically or more likely physically, not that it made much of a difference.

"Okay, so now we have to start some political parties," She said, rubbing her hands together, properly relishing the opportunity.

"I thought you said this George Washington hated those?" he asked, jabbing at the paper in front of him that contained a synopsis she had printed for the day.

"Which is why we _have_ to have them," she said.

Overall it was a long day. They covered welfare, healthcare, the fishing and game licensing scheme and a host of other government programs that were likely to spark controversy. Loki had drawn the line at lobbyists but she didn't press the issue, figuring that the Jotunns would come up with that themselves anyway.

That evening, as Darcy was finishing typing up the day's work in as lawyerly a textual style as she could manage, Loki was sprawled on the couch watching the West Wing. ("But it's self-righteous and highly moralistic in tone," he had whined, "not to mention so completely implausible as to be practically a fairy tale.") She had popped some popcorn to shut him up about having worked through dinner and he was now occasionally pelting her with pieces and pretending he wasn't. "Hey, cut that out!" She said.

"Cut what out?" he said, innocently.

She went back to her typing. A few minutes later, a kernel landed near the spacebar. "Hey, no more of that! I _will_ subject you to more Schoolhouse Rock!" Loki cringed, visibly.

"I'm bored," he whined a few minutes later.

"Fine!" she yelled. "Let me just finish this and we'll go out."

"Out?" he said softly, sitting up and looking at her. She knew she had him now. He hadn't been allowed to leave the lab since she'd let him in that first afternoon and he had been acting more and more restive every day.

"Yeah, out. We'll go to the bar, _if_ you behave." She added, watching him for a reaction. She considered his appearance as well. "And maybe shave, you're looking a little scruffy."

He frowned and ran a hand over his jaw, thoughtfully. "Yes, well… I forgot." At her confused look he continued, "A razor, I mean. When you've been maintaining your physical appearance with magic for eight hundred years, you tend to forget the little things."

"Okay," she said, closing down her laptop and grabbing him by the arm as she passed the couch. "Come on." She led him to the tiny bathroom and started fishing around in a drawer for her electric razor. He had followed her in and she turned back only to find herself face to face with his chest which was softly rising and falling under a midnight blue button-down shirt. Over the last few days, she had mostly kept a decent amount of space between them. She wasn't sure exactly why because he hadn't threatened her in any way. But being right next to him now reminded her of how big he was; even without Thor's bulk, he was easily intimidating. She handed the razor up to him and showed him the functions. She stepped back as far as she could, which was only about a foot, and leaned against the wall. She watched him while he shaved since he had looked like he was afraid one false move with the device might kill him.

"How tall are you, anyway?" she blurted out.

He seemed to consider for a moment, finishing up. "I don't know in your units." He said. He handed the device back and continued, "I'm exactly the same size as Thor, we've measured." Darcy quirked an eyebrow and began to smirk as if holding in laughter. "That's not what I meant and you know it," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Whatever you say," she said, lightly stepping around him and heading down the hall, chuckling as she did. "I'm gonna change clothes and then we can go."

When they got to the bar, Darcy discovered that Loki hadn't had any of the classic American bar foods in any of his travels. She rectified this travesty at once, ordering hot wings, onion rings, fries and nachos. After teaching him to use a microwave, shave with an electric razor, and operate a DVD player, Darcy had started to feel fairly relaxed in his company. In her mind now, he was rarely the guy from the New York incident. His hair was a little longer and his clothes were different enough that no one in the bar seemed to notice him at all.

"Man, if you weren't evil, you'd be the perfect date. You'd always order tons of food and I could look all dainty and still get to try everything," she said as the waitress put it all in front of them with a slightly judgmental look on her face. She also deposited the pitcher of beer Loki had ordered, insisting that it was only about two Asgardian size servings.

"The perfect date?" he said, cautiously. "I shall remember that." They were sitting in a booth under a poster of alien spacecraft hoax images, obligatory in this part of New Mexico. He was inspecting them, curiously. "Isn't that the craft from that poster in Agent Mulder's office?"

Darcy's jaw dropped from around a French fry she was glad she was still holding onto. "How the ever loving fuck did you know that?"

He looked for a moment as if about to say 'Elementary, my dear Watson,' but instead dropped his head conspiratorially and confided, "The last time I was on Midgard, I hung out with a team of science nerds for months. Of course I saw _the X-Files_."

"You're holding out on me, aren't you? You're not as clueless about our culture as you pretend to be."

He huffed in a nonthreatening way, but she continued. "Oh, I don't know what to do with this flattened greasy bag, how is this food in any way?" she said, mimicking his voice from a few hours ago when she had had to show him how to make popcorn. "Come on, what else did these nerds show you?" she urged.

He smiled gently. "Perhaps I have been a little reticent," he said and thought for a moment. "I quite enjoyed those Lord of the Rings films. Many of my minions had weekly gatherings for film viewings. It was often the only title they could all agree on."

"So, you weren't completely controlling their minds, then? Not if they had the will to organize movie nights," she asked, hoping he'd open up a little. Maybe if she could provide SHEILD with some insight into his actions they would be more generous with her stipend.

"Many of them I wasn't controlling at all," he said, picking through his nachos as if trying to find one he could consume in a dignified fashion. "Many were former employees, disgruntled enough as to be perfectly willing to join the team. As I said," he looked her straight in the eye, "some men crave subjugation. They haven't the imagination to carry out such a scheme as mine on their own, but they love the chance to take part in one. It makes them feel alive, even though all they're really doing is carrying out someone else's orders. Most Earth people have typical minion personalities."

They were interrupted by the waitress from whom Darcy ordered a pitcher of margaritas, very quickly, both to get her away and because she suddenly really needed one.

"And then you say things like that," said Darcy. "I take back that thing about you being the perfect date, by the way." He smiled, this time considerably more evilly. "Did you actually _call_ them your 'minions' to their faces or are you just using that word here now?" She asked.

He smirked. "There is nothing wrong with the word. It merely has a definition which most closely resembles their function. Any judgment implied by the word is entirely inferred by you."

"What are you, a psychotherapist grammar teacher now?" she asked, sarcastically.

"I'm only saying it doesn't help to pretend something is anything other than what it is. They _were_ minions," he said. When she was still incredulous, he continued, "You call yourself an intern. Is it not more accurate to call you a slave? You don't get paid. You're being housed by your owner."

"Jane doesn't own me!" she snapped. He merely laughed. The waitress returned with the pitcher and Loki smiled at her indulgently and thanked her in what to Darcy seemed like an unnecessarily sultry voice. They sat in silence as they watched her leave, Darcy most disconcerted and Loki smiling like he was genuinely having a good time and surprised about it.

"I didn't mean to upset you. We're having a philosophical discussion only," he said to Darcy. "Where is the wench anyway?"

"Wench?" said Darcy, confused and thinking he meant the barmaid. "I don't know that we really use that word anymore."

"If she's spreading her legs for my oaf brother, she's little qualified to be called anything other than 'wench'."

"Oh, I think you mean 'slut'. We have a lot of words for that now," she assured him. "Anyway, Jane isn't either of those things. She's an astrophysicist. That's like, one of the main smart-people occupations. It's up there with rocket science and brain surgery. She's at a conference in San Diego."

"You care for her," he said, as if realizing something.

"Yeah," said Darcy, "I take care of my girl. And not that it's any of your business, but she's not spreading her legs for anyone. Thor left. That was the end of that apparently. I've bought way too much ice-cream in the last several months not to think of that relationship as having been a complete bust." She felt instantly sorry and disloyal that she'd said it but figured if she was buzzed he probably was too. The margaritas were pretty strong. She also considered, he _was_ likely the only other person in the universe who wouldn't have been surprised that someone was angry at Thor. Whatever, if anything, he thought about her overshare, she never heard and his face didn't betray anything either.

They kept talking well into the evening about all sorts of things. She never did get anything else out of him about his 'minions' or his plans. As they walked home, they had devolved into a giggly discussion about who he'd prefer to be his minions, Stormtroopers, Oompaloompas, or the minions from Minions. Near the lab door she found some flimsy pretext to shove him, which she'd been dying to do for days.

He grabbed her arm and whispered in a lazy attempt at being threatening, "You take many liberties, mortal."

"Hey, come on. You like me, I can tell." She said with a smile and unlocking the door. "I'm growing on you, just like I grew on Jane."

He hesitated as she held the door open for him, she looked up to see if something was the matter but he just said, "If you grew on Jane Foster in the way you're growing on me, it's a damn shame this lab doesn't have security cameras; because that's something I'd like to see." He watched her for a few moments more. She tried to keep her breathing in check. He was often all over the map, changing emotions and demeanors unpredictably. But this was too on point. Here they were at the end of what could have been considered a sort of quasi-date, which overall had gone very well, they were standing at the doorstep and he was saying suggestive things. In the end, he just entered the building and headed towards his back room, saying "Sleep well, slave."

Darcy slowly locked up after them and went to bed, a buzzing in her ears that had nothing to do with the margaritas.


	6. Chapter 6

Perhaps it was the margaritas, she'd had just enough to put her into the rebound effect, rather than the sleepy phase that accompanied to few or too many, but Darcy couldn't get to sleep for several hours. While she wished she could say it was the Jotunheim bill of rights she was pondering in a studious intellectual way, mostly she was fixated on Loki.

Many things crossed her mind about his actions over the last several days. He had mostly acted in a professional manner (except when he was hungry, which to be fair was pretty often). They largely worked through mealtimes too, given their unofficial one week deadline. That was all the time they had before Jane returned and all of this got a lot more complicated, so they were trying to be quick.

But it was his comment from the end of the evening that really had her shaking her head. It seemed like a brazen thing to say, especially to the staunch feminist she considered herself to be. Had he been low-level flirting with her generally like he had been with the waitress? Or was he flirting more specifically, actually trying to get somewhere? And more importantly, would it work?

Then she thought, he'd brought up Jane, twice in one night. Was he fishing for information? Of course he was, he was Loki. Was it for astrophysical reasons related to potential cunning plans? Or maybe it was just-physical reasons? Jane was kind of a unicorn, the hot female at the science fair, an unattainably attractive anomaly. Was he interested because Thor had been interested? Did she even want to think about why? Was either a better option? Had he genuinely just been curious or was he working some long con?

She tossed and turned on it, then dreamed on it too. She had flashes of them in the bar, him calling her 'slave' in a very different tone of voice than the detached one he had used at the time. She had flashes of them in the bathroom, the foot between them growing smaller and smaller until his face filled her field of vision. She had flashes of him sprawled on the couch, looking incredibly inviting.

The next day was Thursday, the ever ticking Jane-returning countdown clock reminded her, and she woke about noon, her head not too badly aching, considering. Loki was again at the table, perusing a few take-out menus and looking like he hadn't had nearly so much to keep him from sleeping. _Bastard._ He was back to his professional self again and they set to work with little to no awkwardness.

The Chinese food delivery man arrived with lunch at about one and they sat to eat over a discussion about the bill of rights she had drafted.

"No, no, no, there can't be respect for privacy," Darcy was saying. "No democracy is dysfunctional without sex scandals. Except maybe France, but they've had like five republics so other things bring them down…" She carried on until she noticed that he was eyeing the table with rather queasy look on his expressive face. "Hey, you okay? What is it?"

He looked up at her, "I don't even want to _think_ about Jotunn sex scandals."

Darcy snorted with laughter and went back to her dumplings. Maybe she had just been thinking too much. It was more likely he'd just been drunk and sassy. After all, he'd been flirtatious before then, he just hadn't seemed quite so focused about it. He might run a little hot and cold but he was easy on the eyes, she could admit that now that they'd been working together for a little while and she no longer thought of him as only Thor's ex-con little brother.

Late that evening, Loki brought out a large map of Jotunheim and unrolled it on a table anchoring it down with wine bottles and books. They poured some glasses and set about highlighting important terrain. He would tell her who lived where and what the area was known for and she would write it in.

They had argued for a moment over whether he should write. Loki thought so since not many read Latin script in the "real" universe.

She had shut him down instantly saying, "Which is exactly why we should use it, so you don't get caught having screwed a whole realm over with the evidence in your own handwriting!"

After at least a two bottles of wine they were drawing borders between administrative zones. "This was a great idea, the drunker we are when we do this the better," she said. She had relaxed again around him even though he seemed indifferent to any change in her behavior.

"Why don't we draw this one so these mountains here, and this river here, form the border between these two territories," said Loki, coming over to her stand beside her and leaning well into her space to trace his intention on the map.

"Are you kidding?" she asked, sarcastically, trying to concentrate on the map rather than on how nice he smelled. "That's a stable, logical, easily identifiable border. Everyone would know where they stood. What we need is a straight line that bears no relation to what's on the ground. Hold on," she said. She grabbed the atlas they had been referring to and flipped a couple of pages, setting it down and returning to his side a little further away this time, thinking that the wine might be getting to her.

"Look, here's a map of Iraq," she said. "See all those straight lines? No one knows what's out there, where the border is. It's impossible to patrol, there's no natural landmarks for people on the ground to get their bearings, and it's completely arbitrary in terms of who lived where before the line was imposed on them by some foreign government, I think it was the British in this case. Anyway, that's what you need. They'll be fighting over it for centuries. Or at least until they figure out how to gerrymander," she said, finally taking a breath and gazing at the atlas in bemusement at the fucked nature of recent history. "Of course, in a way that's perfect because then they can fight over gerrymandering just like we do," she turned towards him then, a smile brightening her eyes.

He was looking at her with an intense and strange darkness in his usually ice-blue eyes. "I didn't give you enough credit when we first met," he said softly, and while she was wondering what he meant, he closed the small gap between them and placed a hand on the back of her neck, his other arm trapping her against the table. He was still looking at her in that intense way and both of them were now breathing harder. "You're quite diabolical," he whispered and leaned down to kiss her, touching their lips slowly at first but then more insistently when she didn't resist.

Truthfully, her mind had gone completely blank. She only had the presence of mind to concentrate on what was happening and it felt magnificent. He was a thorough and clearly practiced kisser. His arm tightened and his hand spayed on her back, leaving her no choice but to move her arms up around his shoulders. He was so warm and his shirt felt like it was made of something insanely expensive. She could feel him hardening against her belly. He broke off the kiss and leaned down even further to start lightly sucking on her neck. She gasped and her eyes opened in surprise.

She was confronted with the ceiling of the lab with its cheap, off-white panels; it seemed to glare down at her in judgement. As normal as Loki had been acting lately, as humanly dressed and coffee machine trained as he now was, he wasn't normal. He didn't belong here among Jane's machines on the Formica counters. He was licking his way up to her ear now and she could feel his hot breath there. It took all her strength, but she pushed him away.

"What the fuck?" she said, breathlessly as they backed away from each other in surprise.

Apparently, Loki had enough decency left in him to look properly embarrassed. "I didn't mean for that to happen," he said quickly, his voice higher pitched than usual. For a moment it seemed like he might be panicking. He looked slightly flushed and Darcy didn't think it was all the wine's fault. "I mean, I don't know why I did that. There was the map, and all that it represented. And there was you and you were making so much sense," he attempted to clarify.

Darcy thought for a minute, suddenly angry. "That's what gets you hot? Centuries of potential border disputes?"

"That's not exactly how I would put it," he said, with a rueful smile, turning and wiping his now slightly damp brow.

"Just how would you put it?" she asked, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

"I think, when I saw you smile, everything we're doing here all seemed so much closer to working than I had ever allowed myself to think it would," he said reasonably, in what was either a moment of _in vino veritas_ or an Oscar worthy performance of trying to salvage a seduction. She figured it was the former and leaned back against the table, sighing.

"Okay, so you were caught up in the moment," she said.

" _We_ were caught up in the moment," he corrected, coming back towards her. "You were participating."

"I was in shock," she explained. He gave her a look that said, ' _really?_ '

"Shocked that you were enjoying it?" he said, stepping closer until he was back by the table.

" _We_ were enjoying it," she threw back at him. "Your ' _sceptre_ ' was participating."

He smiled awkwardly, she hated to admit that it was endearing, and said, "I find myself paradoxically compelled to tell you that I hoped you hadn't noticed that."

"What?"

"I mean, usually when I kiss a woman, I very much want her to notice," he said.

"Oh, well. Yeah. I guess that makes sense," she said haltingly, then a thought occurred. "Hey, what is that supposed to mean? I'm not good enough for you now?"

"That's not it," he said, seemingly truthful. "As I said, I don't really know why I kissed you. I think I just…thought it would be a bit of fun," he said, with that same endearing, and yet infuriating, sheepish smile.

Darcy thought for a while and finally said. "That's kind of a relief actually. At least it isn't war and or global domination that does that to your pants because that would have been a little too kinky, even for someone with your reputation."

He just quirked an eyebrow and smirked.

"Plus, map-sex is a little _Game of Thrones_." Looking away, she added hastily, "Not that I'm _ever_ letting you watch _Game of Thrones_. Forget I said that."

He lifted her chin with one finger, looking her directly in the eye and said, "I forget nothing, Darcy Lewis." And with that, he walked away, just like last night, leaving her to another night of restlessness.

This time she sat up looking for something to watch on Netflix, trying not to think about what had just happened. She thought about many things. For one, he'd confirmed that he was interested when he'd basically said she was good enough in a way that was clearly meant to be a compliment. But that opened new doors of uncertainty. _Ugh,_ she thought, what would he want in a relationship anyway? If it was even a relationship he was looking for, not just some tail. Was she going to be the bespectacled Midgardian on some intergalactic wish list?

Then again, did that idea bother her? She wasn't exactly looking to settle down right now, she hadn't even graduated. Plus, he'd be gone afterward and she wasn't likely ever to run into him awkwardly at a party. And he was pretty sexy in his dress shirts with two buttons undone, his hair falling just over his shoulders. Give him a guitar and he was basically her Kryptonite. It was just a matter of what he wanted at this point. She thought she might be able to do a one night stand, or a weekend fling but anything more with the God of Mischief just seemed too uncertain. She didn't want to give him the wrong impression. But, what did he think of her, anyway? She knew she wasn't classically attractive, but she'd used the cute card on occasion very successfully. He clearly found her attractive, at least enough to try something.

Her final thought of the night was, _what is he writing all the time_? She seriously doubted that it was femmeslash, his comments about Jane and her notwithstanding. Unfortunately, she found out the next morning at least one thing he'd written. There was a note next to the coffee maker on a full sheet of yellow legal paper ( _typically wasteful_ , said the environmentalist in her), all it said, in beautiful, flowing handwriting was:

"Gone to Asgard."

"Which is exactly why I would never date you!" She yelled to the empty lab.


	7. Chapter 7

Her first call was to Coulson, who told her that everything was fine, that Loki had gone to Asgard to get his powers back, right on schedule. And that they were nearly done with the assignment. After assuring her of this in the same way that he had assured her that she would get her iPod back once they had 'cleared' it, he had rung off, claiming to have another call.

All of this stuck in Darcy's craw. As far as she had been aware, there was no such schedule, she'd assumed she would never even be in the same room with a Loki who had his powers, and to her, they seemed only to have just begun their 'assignment'. Sure, they'd made a constitution, a bill of rights, and established the basic government departments, but there were tons of unanswered questions left. As far as she was concerned these included everything from founding an arts program to establishing some ultra-liberal and ultra conservative news media outlets that would liven up the election cycle.

Just to make matters worse, and to finish pissing her off about all things SHEILD related, she had stubbed her toe on the box Coulson gave her when all this had started. In her haste to start working on the 'project' she had forgotten about it as soon as she'd put it down that first day. She opened it and inspected the contents.

Inside there was a pair of seriously steampunk-looking handcuffs, a dart full of some sort of tranquilizer (but nothing to shoot it from), and a cell phone with a few preprogrammed SHEILD numbers (which doubly annoyed her since she'd just used her own minutes to call Coulson). She was suddenly glad she'd forgotten about the box. If this was all she'd had to defend herself against Loki, magic or no magic, he could easily have overpowered her. She sat for a while trying to decide whether the contents of the box meant that they really did think Loki was under control or that she was just completely expendable.

She sat at the table amidst wreckage of pizza boxes, wine and beer bottles, maps, and half of her poli-sci textbook library feeling totally abandoned. Despite her initial reluctance, the assignment had turned out to be a lot fun, and not just the part where she'd made out with an alien. If it was nearly complete, did that mean she would never see Loki again? Would he even come back from Asgard? He hadn't taken any of their materials with him, but she doubted that would pose much of a problem, SHEILD could always swoop in and grab them. Furthermore, what would Loki be like once he did have his powers back? He had been learning quickly, but mostly he had been relying on her for everything he had formerly used magic for. The thought suddenly occurred to her that maybe part of why he had kissed her had been the Florence Nightingale effect (or possibly the Stockholm syndrome).

She tried for about half an hour to work some more on the map but gave up when she noticed she was staring into space more than working. It was time to call it, a day off wouldn't hurt, especially since her 'co-worker' wasn't even there.

She was well into a Millionaire Matchmaker marathon and a pint of Ben and Jerry's when her cell rang. It was Jane. Eagerly, Darcy muted the TV and picked up.

"Darcy?" said a voice that sounded slightly harried but exhilarated. Darcy had learned to recognize this as Jane's science fair voice. "Hey, it's Jane."

"Hey! I'm so glad you called," said Darcy. They chatted for a while about the booth, who Jane had met, and what the lectures were about. Darcy was glad of the chance to just sit back and listen to something totally unrelated to her current predicament. When Jane seemed to have talked herself out, she rejoined the conversation saying, "So, any cute guys there at Sci-con?"

"I don't know," Jane laughed. "You know I'm not really looking for that right now. Anyway, I haven't seen anyone tall, dark, and handsome."

"And by that you mean, your standards have changed since big, Norse, and muscly?" Jane ignored this.

"There's a rumor that Tony Stark might show. I kind of doubt it though, the Victoria's Secret fashion show is this weekend," said Jane, ruefully.

"Ah, foiled again," Darcy said mock-wistfully.

"Hey, when you answered you said you were glad I'd called," said Jane. "Were you having trouble with one of the simulations I left you, because I totally want to change them now, anyway."

"Not exactly," Darcy said, not sure how to start. "Uh, okay, speaking of tall, dark, and handsome…I don't know if you would remember, I mean… it was a while ago now and all but…"

"Darcy?" Jane said, warningly.

"You know Thor has a brother, right?"

"The crazy one, from breaking news?" she said. "Yeah, somehow he's stuck in my mind," she finished sarcastically.

"Well, here's the thing…"

When the whole story had finally come out, Jane's response wasn't exactly what Darcy was hoping for.

"Damn SHEILD, I knew I shouldn't have trusted it when a booth next to one of the top aeronautics companies came free this week at 'short notice'. They engineered this whole thing so I wouldn't be there!"

"Really, Jane?" said Darcy. "That's all you got out of all that? I made out with a homicidal maniac!"

"And you think he might have 'fled?' "she questioned, "Before he got some? I don't think that's likely. This sounds more like a calculated seduction. You need to shut it down."

"Ugh. I know." Darcy whined. "But he's such a good kisser, Jane. You have no idea."

"So, you think he's just after a roll in the hay, pretty much?" Jane paused for thought. "That's not too bad. I mean, if he really is _not_ homicidal anymore. You said he's trying really hard with this project, right?"

"Yeah, and I'm starting to think that even his interest in Empire building isn't as malevolent as he claims it is. A lot of his ideas aren't inherently bad. He actually seems like he could run a government."

"Sounds like he's smart-sexy," said Jane, "I think you're in trouble."

"Maybe it's a symmetry thing," Darcy suggested, "He's kinda Thor's sidekick and I'm kinda your sidekick."

"Darcy, you're not my sidekick. I'm not even a main character in whatever this is," said Jane. "Should I come home?" she asked, sympathetically.

"I can't see that helping," she said after barely a moment's thought. "No, you sound like you're having fun. You should stay. I think I just needed someone to unload on."

"Well, alright, I'll be back Monday around two."

They said their goodbyes and Darcy unmuted Patti Stanger, who was calling some guy a schmuck for not calling after a date. "I here ya, Patti," she said into her mostly melted Cherry Garcia. She settled in for a relaxing night of binge-watching, vaguely wondering when Loki would return.

She was halfway through her coffee the next morning when Loki reappeared. Literally, he appeared out of thin air only about ten feet from her. She managed to spit coffee all over the table and herself, shouting "Goddamn it!" at the top of her voice. "What the hell? Don't do that to people!"

Loki was just standing there in his full Asgardian armor (sans helmet) grinning like the Cheshire cat. "Just a bit of fun," he said, playfully.

"Ugh, now I have to change clothes." She warned, "Stay right where you are, I'm not done telling you off." She dashed back to her room and quickly replaced her shirt for one that wasn't dripping wet and likely permanently stained. When she returned, Loki was vanishing the coffee on the table. He looked different. There was something about him, a sort of aura that made him appear healthier and more vital. If she thought he had looked inviting before…yeah, she was in trouble.

Steeling herself, she said, "Hey, listen up. Rule number one: no _apparating_. You don't get to pop in and out of here like the Weasley twins just because you feel like it. Use the doors, and pop in where no one can see you do it. Two: you need to change back into your Banana Republic apparel because people can see you through these windows. Rule number three: you can't just up and leave! Not cool, man. I need to be kept in the loop on what's happening with this 'project'." She finished her rant and noticed Loki was no longer smiling, all that vitality was now being directed upon her in the form of a menacing smile.

"I don't like your tone, mortal," he said as he stepped closer, a golden light transforming his clothes into something a little more Barney's and little less barmy.

She wasn't about to back down, "I can use whatever tone I want. I can see you've got your mojo back, but I'm still in charge here. I still have to help you, you know. Odin didn't imbue you with the spirit of Thomas Jefferson along with reinstating your magic, so you can cool your jets and do as I say or the deal is off."

This seemed to mollify him. Maybe he was just a little drunk on power. "Fine, I am sorry that I scared you," he said, conciliatorily reaching out and touching her arm in a surprisingly non-threatening way. "I wouldn't have hurt you, I'm not-"

"Yeah, I know. You're not dangerous to me," she finished for him, sighing. "Look, let's just get back to work okay? Coulson said we were nearly finished up here but I still think we have a lot of work to do."

"Certainly," he said and made for the table with the map still spread upon it. She surveyed him there, in his dark trousers and green shirt neatly tucked in, his golden aura giving his skin a certain vivid tone that hadn't been there before. The idea of hovering over a map with him was enticing but probably not very wise.

Instead, she said "I was thinking maybe these cabinet departments could use a second look first."

But the God of Lies saw right through her. "I'm sure they'll do. I've had some ideas during my journey," he said, patting the table. She gulped and he continued after a beat "About these borders."

"Right," she said, eyes locked on the hand that was on the map. "I'm just going to go make some more coffee. _Someone_ made me spill mine and I have a feeling I'm going to need it."


	8. Chapter 8

They worked for the nearly the rest of the day Saturday tying up loose ends and finishing the map. Loki was making more secret little notes than ever but she didn't bother to ask him about them. About six in the evening they called it quits and ordered pizza yet again. Loki seemed partial to Hawaiian so she got two of them. "Hey," she said, hanging up the phone. "Can't you just conjure us pizza?"

"I could, but I don't know that it would taste quite right," he said, sinking onto the large, comfy chair in the 'living room' and placing his now bare feet on the table. She came over and sat on the couch, picking up the remote and starting to flip through channels.

"So," she said, slyly. "Does that mean that even with your magical ability to conjure Asgardian snacks restored to you, you still prefer an Earth food?"

"No," he said, a little too quickly. She quirked brow at him. "Perhaps. It is the combination of sweet and savory. I find it …novel," he admitted.

She turned to him and taunted, "You like it! You like something on Midgard."

"No I don't," he said, irritated but repressing a smile.

"You like me, I'm on Midgard," she said, grinning.

"I do not," he said, lightly annoyed.

"Oh, you don't like me?" she said, sarcastically but without any malice. "So you regularly put your tongue down the throats of people you _don't_ like?" she teased.

When he looked up at her, his eyes had taken on that dark sparkle again and he said, "Make no mistake, I desire you, that doesn't mean I like you."

"You 'desire' me?" she said, her tone asking for clarification.

"You know I do," he said nearly growling, "Come here and I'll prove it," his eyes locked on hers. She wondered if his powers included hypnotism because damned if she wasn't rising from the couch and coming to stand near him. He looked stronger with his powers back, there was a change in the way he seemed to fill out his shirt. Before she could do anything about it, he grabbed her by the hips and settled her on his lap, never breaking eye contact. She could, in fact, feel his desire, it was _pretty obvious_. Her breathing became shallow and she rested her hands on his chest not sure if she was pushing him away or pulling him closer.

"Now," he said. "Do you desire _me_?"

Here in his lap, with his warm arms around her, his huge hands splayed on her back, his sexy face all up in hers, there was nothing for it. Already breathless, she replied, "Yeah."

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" he said in a husky voice, and kissed her firmly.

The re-magicked Loki apparently wasn't wasting any time. His hands were suddenly everywhere, in her hair, on her back, running down her arms. She didn't bother to resist this time as she felt his warm tongue coaxing her to open her mouth. He tasted like sweet coffee and felt like heaven.

The insistence of his kiss tilted her head back giving him access to her neck where he began to place hot, open mouthed kisses. She grabbed at his shoulders to hang on and the fabric felt soft as a cloud. "Man, what is this made of?" she said, distractedly and he redoubled his efforts on her neck.

"No more stalling," he muttered, raising his head and capturing her lips again. Her back suddenly felt chilled as his warm hands left it so he could reposition her. She found herself straddling him, his hands under her thighs, spreading them as wide as the fluffy armchair would allow and she could feel him, big and hard, right where she wanted him if it hadn't been for those damn GQ clothes. As soon as he had her positioned, one of his hands went straight beneath her jeans, bypassing her panties to squeeze her ass. _Interesting,_ she thought through the mental haze caused by the heat of his tongue in her mouth, _most guys go for the boobs._ Clearly, Loki was not most guys. He was now leaning forward in the chair, one hand cradling her neck so that she had to cling to him as he held her a few feet off the floor, pulling her into him with the hand in her jeans to grind himself against her center.

There was a sound in her ears, as if their movements were rattling the coffee table, she made the mistake of trying to turn her head to see, only to have Loki's quick tongue invade her ear. If he was surprised, he recovered well and went with it, teasing its rim and lobe with his teeth. But Darcy had discovered the source of the rapping sound. It was the pizza man, knocking on the glass. She knew he couldn't see them from behind the chair, but she jerked up yelling, "Stop!" and had to fight her way out of Loki's strong arms, whining, "Damn it!"

She was completely out of breath and had to shake herself. The look on Loki's face was livid as he turned to peer around the edge of the chair, cursing in what was possibly Old Norse. Darcy went to the door trying to ignore how mussed her hair probably looked. She hated herself for having forgotten how close all the businesses were together in this tiny town, it couldn't have been twenty minutes yet. Was there a free pizza deal to be had if it arrived too quickly?

Loki continued to sit in the chair until the pizza man had been paid and Darcy brought their bounty to the table. She could admit to feeling a little smug about why that might be. When he finally came over, they began to eat in silence but it wasn't long before Darcy couldn't take it. They had to speak sometime and there was no avoiding the Bilgesnipe in the room.

"Look," she sighed, mentally saying 'Fuck it'. "What is this? What are we doing?"

"Eating pizza," he said with false calmness, earning himself a glare.

"You know what I mean," she said.

"I'm having fun. What are you doing?" he replied, suddenly serious.

"So that's all this is, a little fun?" she asked, trying to make sure she didn't scare him off by sounding hysterical or clingy.

"Does that bother you?"

She wasn't sure. Did it? She needed a little time now that she had a straight answer from him about what he wanted. "Let me get back to you on that," she said, finally.

They continued eating in silence for a few more minutes before he said, "At the risk of incurring your wrath, I must tell you I have a few errands to run tomorrow. I will leave before sun up and I should be back before noon."

"Okay…" she said, trying to think of what he could possibly need in town, then she remembered he was magical, he could be going anywhere. If she'd said 'no it didn't bother her' a minute or two ago, would he not have told her that, just 'hit it and quit it' and left her wondering all morning long about what she'd done wrong? Yeah, she definitely needed some time to think. She changed the subject, asking him what Asgardian food was like and then spent the rest of dinner trying to tamp down her libido. Afterward, he claimed to be tired from his journey, sauntering to his back room, leaving her to her thoughts.

Just after noon the next day, she was working on a term paper when she heard a very soft swooshing noise in the kitchen that signaled Loki's return. "I _have_ to put a bell on him," she muttered to herself, but she was glad he'd at least obeyed her about hiding his beaming capability.

"Sorry for being late, I was delayed in New York," he said, entering the main room, as if that explained anything.

"Oh it's cool. Hey, so now that you have your magic back, can you sneak us into the Hamilton musical?" she asked as he stood there watching her. "That thing is impossible to get tickets to."

"I'm afraid there isn't time." He seemed somewhat agitated and she soon found out why. "I got you a gift, though," he said, producing a large, flat box from what was presumably some sort of fifth dimensional storage closet and setting it on a table. "Stand up and close your eyes," he said cheerfully.

"You're kidding me, right?" she said, skeptically. God knows what might be in that box, literally.

"No," he said, mock-offended. "Just do it." She did so and allowed him to maneuver her a few feet over. She felt something heavy fall onto her shoulders and wrap around her, brushing her ankles. Next, a soft hat was pulled over her head. Loki rested his hands on her shoulders and seductively whispered, "Open them."

She did and gasped, he had turned one of the lab windows into a full length mirror and she was stunned to see herself in a long, grey and black fur coat that looked suspiciously like it had been made from at least a hundred of some desperately adorable and entirely helpless creatures. The hat matched, and Loki was watching her from behind, holding a pair of leather gloves with fur trim.

"Have you been watching Doctor Zhivago?" she asked. "Is that where you were, did you go to Russia for this?"

"You don't like it?" he said, in almost a monotone, retreating a little, his hurt voice, she had come to suspect.

"No, no. I love it," she assured him, turning to put a hand on his arm and surprising herself by kissing his cheek. She had to go all the way up on her tip toes; he was really too tall for casual affection. "I guess I never got around to telling you about P.E.T.A."

"Will I ever understand more than half of what you say?"

"Stick around, maybe we'll find out," she said with a smile, turning back to the mirror and preening.

"More like you'll be sticking around me," he said, his tone becoming serious. "You'll need to stay close. I don't want you wandering off and getting lost. Freezing to death is probably the nicest fate you're likely to meet on Jotunheim."

Darcy was only half listening, buttoning up the coat and turning side-face. "What do you mean, on Jotunheim?" she said, distractedly.

"I mean, when we get to Jotunheim, I insist you stay close and do exactly as I say," he said, grabbing her arms and holding her still.

"And when you say 'when we get to Jotunheim', what do you mean, exactly?"

"Are you being purposefully dense? We are going to Jotunheim. Who did you think was going to teach the Jotunns how to use the constitution?" That got her complete attention.

"Uh, Poli-scientists Without Borders?" she was practically shrieked. This was getting out of hand. "I can't go to Jotunheim! I'd freeze to death if I didn't choke on the lack of oxygen first! Or get my head ripped off!"

"You won't freeze to death, I've already covered that," he said, tugging her hat down further around her ears. "There's plenty of oxygen there, you'll breathe just fine. And as for having your head ripped off, they wouldn't dare. For the moment, I'm still their king," he said, his tone merely conversational.

Darcy shrugged him off and began to back away, holding her hands out in front of her in the universal gesture for 'stay back.' "Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What did I tell you about including me in the plan? It suddenly seems like there's a metric shit-ton of stuff you haven't been telling me."

"I haven't lied to you," he said, with an edge in his voice.

"Okay, fine. _Omitted to mention_?" she said, using air quotes. "Number one: I'm expected to go into outer space. Number two: I'm supposed to teach giant, angry blue people how to do their civic duty. Number three: you're their king, how does that even work? And how am I supposed to teach them anything? Somehow I don't think the Jotunns are going to respond well to smiley face stickers and extra-long recesses!"

"Desist, woman!" he shouted, shaking her lightly. "I admit, I might have left out a few of the details. But it's nothing too difficult to understand."

"A few details!" she shouted. "You may as well have had your jaw wired shut! What are you? A prince of Asgard and a king of equivocation?"

Loki just turned away angrily and started pacing, probably coming up with more half-truths. He surprised her when he turned back to her, his shoulders slightly slumped. "Look, you know Thor and I aren't really brothers, right?" he asked.

"Uh, no? I didn't know that. It explains a lot though." He gave her a look that, had it been solid, might have cut through her.

"Well, I was sent to Jotunheim in the first place because I am the son of their previous king, and therefore, king now." He said, grudgingly. "It was meant to be a punishment, a sort of trial-by-fire. Or ice, I suppose."

"So, wait, you and Thor aren't even the same species?" She winced even as the words left her mouth. "Okay, I didn't mean that to sound as racist as it probably did," she said, quickly. He glared at her more scarily than he ever had before. But it lasted only a few moments as he got his breathing under control and he seemed to 'center' himself.

"And as to how you're supposed to teach them," he said, calmly, "I have it all written down here." He pulled out his legal pad and tapped it. "I have devised a system. You will be teaching a select group of Jotunns I have chosen who are natural leaders and the most intelligent among their race. Then they will go back to their people and refer the knowledge. Sort of like a representative democracy, no?"

He was very pleased with himself for that last remark, she could tell, and it did make her want to give him a little gold star. Suddenly she realized her mother was right, after graduation, she probably would end up teaching. After a room full of freezing blue giants, high-schoolers should be a breeze. She took the legal pad from his hand and perused it. It was a sort of lesson plan with long sequences of runic letters that might have been names of various Jotunns. So _that_ was what he had been scribbling. No wonder he wouldn't let her see it. She would never have agreed to go with him to Jotunheim if he had told her the first day.

"You left this out on purpose, didn't you?" she said. "You knew I wouldn't agree to go, so you got me halfway through, knowing that I could never say no to finishing the job, before springing this on me!"

"And it worked, brilliantly," he said, smirking. "Come now, you've had fun this week. And we've had fun together?" he questioned suggestively, coaxing a smile out of her.

"I have. But it's not nice to manipulate people," she said. "Coulson didn't say anything about me going to space though." Something occurred to her then and she asked, dreading the answer, "Does he even know about this?"

"Of course he knows," Loki snorted. "I just got out of prison for having tried to take over the world. Do you think I want to go back for having kidnapped one Midgardian undergraduate?" He watched her as she began taking off the coat, shaking her head. He had her and he knew it. Who in their right mind would pass up the opportunity to go to space, meet aliens, and pad their resume all the while dressed like Julie Christy?

"I don't have to call you Your Highness, do I?" she asked.

He took a moment and she could almost see the gears turning in his head, then he said "Yes… yes, you do," in a very unconvincing, sly manner.

"Yeah…That's not happening," she said and went off to her room and attempted to pack a bag for what may or may not end up being a dirty weekend on Jotunheim.


	9. Chapter 9

"This is super unfair. I can see Asgard, but I'm not allowed to go there?" Darcy asked as she and Loki stood on the Rainbow Bridge waiting for what looked like one of the Death Star guns to stop spinning outrageously. Loki looked toward Heimdall who stood eyeing him skeptically.

"I do not have permission to take you into Asgard itself," Loki said, making sure to be heard by both her and the gatekeeper.

"No, I get it," she said, eyeing the guardian herself for the first time, who as far as Darcy could tell was a living Oscars statuette. He was stoic and looked as impassable as the guards at Buckingham Palace. "I only have a transit visa."

As the machinery repositioned itself Darcy said, "Also, this is kinda inconvenient, isn't it? In an all roads lead to Rome kind of way? I mean, what if I wanted to go from Paris to Dusseldorf? Or like, Vanaheim to Jotunheim, I would have to come through here even though it's out of the way?"

"The Bifrost is not a freeway," said Loki, irritably. "Just how many people do you think are allowed the privilege of traveling on it in the first place?"

"Oh, so it's a toll road for the one percent?" she groused. "Typical."

"Desist," he said. He was standing there in his Asgardian armor and seemed shifty.

"What's the matter with you," asked Darcy, pulling her furs up around her chin. "You're all twitchy."

"I assure you," said Loki, coldly, "I am a God. I do not get _twitchy_." He paced a little before turning to her and saying, "Before we make the next leg of our journey, there is something you need to know. I will look different there. I will take my Jotunn form. I have found it easier to rule in that guise and that is how they know me." When she looked worried he added, "I will be myself when we are alone."

"Right," she said, not sure how she felt about that. The SHEILD agents that had shown up that morning had assured her that they had been given a guarantee from an unnamed Asgardian representative that Darcy would be completely safe on Jotunheim. They had also assured her that they would deliver as much of her diatribe against Coulson as they could remember to his face, since in her words he had been 'too cowardly to face her.' They had then set about sealing the perimeter of the lab, driving her and Loki and a suitcase full of their teaching materials out to the middle of nowhere for their 'beaming up.' Loki had just rolled his eyes when she called it that and called Heimdall before he could say anything disparaging that might diminish his chances with her. This is what Darcy was assuming at least, since she still hadn't got back to him about whether or not she was okay with having casual sex with him.

When the Bifrost opened, Loki handed Darcy the suitcase, he had explained that it would not be seemly for the king to be seen carrying anything so mundane, and took her hand. They stepped into the amazing-technicolor-teleportation beam and were on Jotunheim only moments later.

It was a desolate place and absolutely freezing. They had landed at the edge of a cliff and Loki began to stride towards a large ziggurat or pylon temple looking thing not too far away, she assumed it was a palace of some sort. Everywhere she stepped she was afraid she would slip on the ice that covered the planet, not least because it was so dark she could barely see her feet. Loki was staying purposefully in front of her and she suspected it was because he didn't want her to see his Jotunn face, which he had drawn on as soon as they landed, she had seen the blue tint growing in his cheeks and his hand as he had dropped hers.

As they drew nearer to the palace, a troop of Jotunns in two lines stepped out of the shadows, the two in front bowed low to Loki and the lines formed into a sort of honor guard that felt to Darcy more like she was being taken to meet her executioner than being brought to safety.

As far as Darcy was concerned, the Jotunns were scary as fuck. They were also almost entirely naked, wearing little kilts and scraps of clothing like the crew of the SS Botany Bay. Loki had apparently left a bloodthirsty unit of cutthroats in charge and was paying them handsomely (COD* so as not to get screwed). She had to hand it to him, he wasn't your typical, foolish mistake making supervillain.

As they made their way to the palace, which seemed to be composed entirely of ice, she got brief glimpses of Jotunns doing Jotunn things like brawling, arguing in a guttural language, and generally brooding Thinker-style on piles of rock. Once inside the palace, they were shown into a large room made floor to ceiling out of ice. Their Jotunn protection detail left them alone for the first time and she looked at Loki. He was shifting quickly into his pale self again. She could admit to herself that she was a little disappointed not to have been able to see what he looked like.

"Here were are, our room for the week," he said, making a sweeping gesture. All in all it was spartanly furnished, with what looked like a table and immobile chairs made of, you guessed it, ice. There was also stone chest which looked like it was meant to hold clothes. In the middle of the room, farthest away from the cold walls was a large pile of furs that Darcy could only assume was meant to be a bed.

"So, where are you going to be sleeping?" she asked, joking.

"I just said," he replied. "This is our room."

Right, was he serious? Was this some way of forcing her hand? "Um…I'm not sure I'm ready to be sleeping with you," Darcy said.

"You're not going to be sleeping with me, you're going to be sleeping, with me. What happened to you being so worried about freezing to death?"

"It just feels like maybe we're skipping some steps here. On earth there are rules, okay?"

He took her chin in his hand tightly. "I don't know if you're aware but I've never really been one for following the rules," he said, as if it should have been perfectly obvious, and kissed her quickly but sternly. It was over in an instant and he was back to his business-like self, saying, "Now, I have to go for a while, to gather your class for tomorrow morning and do some administrative tasks. You should be perfectly safe here, I have several strong enchantments on the door. I'll be back later tonight."

When he left, Darcy explored the chamber and looked out the windows, wondering how he could tell what time it was given that Jotunheim apparently had no sun. She was exhausted from having traveled on the rainbow bridge and decided she might as well test out the prehistoric bed. She lay there in her fur coat and hat, not daring to take off a stitch of clothing in this cold. Despite all the many things she was nervous about, she was asleep in minutes.

The next morning, after a breakfast of a quickly munched power bar that she'd eaten in bed, still covered in as many fur things as possible, Darcy stood at the head of what could only be described as a classroom (made out of ice, of course) full of large, blue, half naked Jotunns. "So," she said, "I'm Darcy. I'm here to teach you about democracy."

"He said you were here to set us free!" said a gruff voice from the front row.

"Well, in a way, I kind of am." She said, thinking for a moment about how best to proceed. "I'm here to teach you how to set yourselves free." She paused to let that sink in. There were skeptical looks all around. "Look, I can't set you free, no one can. You have to do it yourselves. By learning about democracy, you take charge of your own lives, it's all very self-affirming and other Oprah-like things."

There were more quizzical looks. "Right, well… What do the other realms say about Jotunheim?"she asked, changing tack.

"That we are a race of monsters?" came a voice from the middle of the room.

"That we have perpetual blue balls?" snickered one from the back row.

"That we are doomed to subjugation by the Aesir!" said a large Jotunn close by.

"Look," she said. "What do you guys do exactly, sit around hating Asgard?" When she got a lot of affronted but not contradictory looks she went further. "Democracy is the answer. This system is what's going to set you free. You'll be on your own, you don't have to hate Asgard anymore, you can just get on with your lives, you can have jobs and get married and have little blue kids and vote every few years. It's great. Plus, if you're not going to war anytime soon you can put some serious muscle into fixing your infrastructure. That's a lot of employment opportunities." They seemed to be listening at least. It was a start. "You take this chance to make your society work really well and no one in the other realms will be able to laugh at the Jotunns anymore," she concluded, proud of herself. This feeling lasted about one and a half seconds.

"It is Jotnar," rasped a large Jotunn from the second row.

"Uh…" said Darcy, "What is?"

"The plural of Jotunn is Jotnar," came the voice again, shaking her to the bone. There was really only one way to play this as far as she was concerned, blithely admit your own mistakes and blame Loki.

"No shit, really?" she asked, sinking down onto the desk. "Sorry but Loki literally never mentioned that. He probably didn't even bother to find out, huh?" There was some noise that she could only describe to herself as good natured chuckling and she carried on, thinking, _Could have gone worse, now we're getting somewhere_.

Overall, the day went fairly well. Loki had been elsewhere doing god knows what and she had been left in the care of one of his mercenary defense detail. She was lying on the bed on her stomach checking some quizzes, a difficult task given that they were all in Jotunn-speak. It was late and she had been wondering where Loki had got to when the door opened behind her and soon enough a body exhaling an exhausted sigh hit the furs beside her. She looked over only to see a blue face and big, red eyes and it took her a second to realize what she was seeing.

"Jesus Christ!" she yelled, a little too harshly. "You scared the shit out of me. Don't do that!"

He looked her in the eye, a worried expression on his face which was soon replaced with one that was incredibly dejected. "I'm repulsive, aren't I?" he said. The tone of his voice said he had had a very bad day. She put the quizzes aside and sat up, looking down at him, lying there tiredly.

"I don't know, not really," she said, seriously considering him. He just looked like he had blue skin and a lot of tribal tattoos.

"Oh, please. Could I get you into bed with me, looking like this?" he asked.

"Well, you kinda have got me in bed with you like this, and the other you never actually did," she reminded him.

"I told you, we're not really 'sharing a bed'. Besides, I was brought up to be a gentleman," he said, sounding sly, as if he rather wished he hadn't been.

She wasn't going to take the bait this time, he was avoiding the subject. "You were brought up thinking frost giants were the enemy," she said. "Consider this: if the enemy isn't the big bad, there's no glory in defeating them. Julius Caesar talked about the Gauls like that. It's propaganda. Maybe the Jotunns aren't even that bad, it's just a product of a racist system. You teach your children about how bad the 'other' is – like the Nazis did with the Jews. There were all these texts that talked about how the Jews supposedly sacrificed babies at weird ceremonies and stuff like that."

"But the the Jotunns do sacrifice babies," he said, blankly.

"Dude, so not the point." She said. "And so _not_ the time to tell me that."

"I shall withhold from trying to explain just how wrong you are about the Jotunns until after you've got to know them better," he said. They lay there in silence for a few minutes. She could feel him sulking even through the many layers of clothing and bedding between them. He seemed even more put out than when he'd lost his powers. She decided it was time for another Darcy-special pep talk. She lay down close but not touching.

"Hey, Mystique is blue and she's super-hot," she said, definitively. "And those aliens in Avatar? They were pretty cool. Smurfs! Not the most badass comparison, but they're fairly harmless, that's gotta count for something, right?"

He snorted. She sighed. It seemed like this was a non-starter, at least for the time being. They lay there in silence for a few moments, Loki slowly taking on his Aesir form as he warmed up in the furs.

"This is, hands down, the weirdest sleep-over I've ever been to," said Darcy, yawning.

A few Endnotes:

Am I the only one who thinks Loki could be Mystique's father? They're both blue and they can both shape shift and mimic voices, just sayin'. I doubt I'm alone there, but then again, I'm not on Tumblr very much.

*COD means 'cash on delivery' (I'm old and figured some people might not know that since it's not a thing anymore)


	10. Chapter 10

Darcy woke Friday morning as she had several days this week, with a bed hogging giant draping at least one limb around her. Loki was apparently not an introverted sleeper, which she had to admit surprised her. She was glad of his warmth, however, since even the piles of furs on the bed were no match for the ice chamber in which they slept.

She was getting used to waking up this way and Loki, though he hadn't been a perfect gentleman, more a slightly tarnished gentleman, seemed to be enjoying it too. As soon as he felt her shifting, the arm that was lying heavily over her side tightened and he pulled her back against him, nuzzling her hair.

"Dude," she said, "Cut that out." She slapped him on the arm trying to wake him fully.

"You were more fun on Midgard," he muttered by way of a response and released her.

Darcy made her way out of the bed and down into a small chamber that had been carved out of the living rock. It contained a hot spring in which she had been bathing for the last several days. Ablutions performed, she re-entered the bed chamber to find Loki still in bed, only now he had moved to the middle and was sprawled fully.

"Hey," she said, tapping his foot through the fur blankets. "I'm headed out, okay? I have my class in like five minutes."

"Alright, don't get into trouble," he grumbled.

As she made her way toward the 'schoolroom' she thought about Loki. He'd been reasonably relaxed for the last couple of days, much more than he had been when they first arrived on Jotunheim. She thought it was likely because several of her students had assured him that they were enjoying her teaching (but it may also have been that he sent a mercenary guard with her everywhere she went). Indeed, she had felt like they were making good progress. Today was technically the last 'teaching' day and then she planned to run a mock election Saturday before returning to New Mexico that evening.

"Appropriations. Say it with me. Appro-pri-ations. This is a very important concept," said Darcy to her class near the end of the day.

"Isn't that dishonest?" said a Jotunn in the first row who had been studiously taking notes all week.

"No…" she said, hating herself a little. "It's totally great. As long as you use it for good. Like orphanage funding," she said, punctuating this by wagging a finger. "So, are there any more questions about anything I've covered?" No one said anything. "It's okay, just shout it out," she encouraged.

"Well…" said a Jotunn in the second row whose name was particularly guttural and hard to pronounce, "It's not really a question, but we were wondering if you wanted to come out with us after class?"

"Out?" asked Darcy, flabbergasted. "You mean, like to a bar?"

"Yes, we go to a tavern nearby sometimes. It's got great food and Jotulschlager. It's a drink," said the Jotunn at her skeptical look. She looked at their faces, which were pretty hard to resist, actually. Overall, they'd been receptive and even laughed at her jokes most of the time. Who was she to refuse? Besides, the lesson had ended earlier in the day than she expected and she'd probably be back before Loki even got home.

"Okay. Drinking with your professor is kind of a college tradition. Of course I'll come." She said.

Loki was pacing his ice chamber. It was late, or late for Darcy anyway. She had been meant to arrive back an hour ago and he usually had a report from her mercenary that she was in for the night. When he had not come, Loki had left the throne room to see if everything was alright. She was not in their chamber and he was trying to convince himself that he was only mildly concerned. It was her last day, perhaps her lesson had run over.

He paced for a while longer, then again, why not send a message if she was going to be late. Women, he scoffed. Flighty, Midgardian women, he corrected in his mind. He would give her another ten minutes, okay, perhaps five minutes. He wasn't worried, of course not. It was just that SHEILD and the Avengers would probably kill him if something happened to one of their associates.

Five minutes crept by without any sign of Darcy and Loki stalked to the door summoning his guards. "Find the Lady Darcy and bring her to me immediately," He ordered, in as calm a voice as he could manage through clenched teeth.

It was half an hour before the guards started to trickle back in with no news of Darcy. They'd searched all the likely kidnapper-type places, caves, storage rooms, alleys of questionable sanitation. It must be a clever one, like one of the ones in her class, he thought, ruefully, getting angrier with himself by the minute. He went out and searched himself briefly before realizing that Jotunheim was going to be impossible to search in time. Darcy had her furs, but in the open, the mortal would freeze. If only there was a way to move more quickly. Jotuns had no transportation machines of any kind. What he wouldn't give to be able to turn himself into a bird and fly, he thought. Actually he could do that, but it would still be too slow. What he needed was help. It might hurt his pride, he told himself, but it was better than going back to SHEILD without Darcy.

It had been a good day so far, for Thor Odinson. Back on Asgard after a close and brutal victory on Alfheim, he was glad to have gotten back to civilization. He'd had two chickens, porridge and a bowl of fruit for breakfast, gone for a run afterward and was now dripping with sweat and shirtless, as he held his trademark hammer close and was practicing deflecting large rocks being thrown at him by a large Asgardian trainer with some wicked looking scars. The man had stopped however, and Thor turned around to see why.

His erstwhile brother and frost giant Loki was coming towards him briskly, a grim expression on his face.

"Thor," he said, slightly out of breath. "I need your help." Loki sounded as though he'd bitten through his tongue delivering those words and Thor took pity on him, deciding for once not to mock him.

"What has happened, Loki?"

"I don't know exactly but Darcy did not return to our chambers at the appointed time," he said.

Thor raised an eyebrow at the words 'our chambers'. "You have managed to bed the lady Darcy? She is a fine catch, brother, be proud."

"No, you oaf," Loki spit out. "We were sharing a room so I could keep her safe. Now she is gone and I know not what to do. I have sent men to search but they turned up nothing. I searched myself until I thought to come to you. I need your hammer. You must fly over the lands around the capital of Jotunheim and see if you can locate her before she freezes to death," he said, quickly. He was trying to drive home the seriousness of the situation, but Thor always had been a bit thick.

Finally, he got the message through and they returned to Jotunheim together. After several passes of the countryside Thor's search had proved just as fruitless as Loki's search of the palace. The two now sat on a sort of mesa overlooking the city. Loki was pacing and Thor was seeing a side of his brother he had not known existed. "We will find her, brother," he said.

"I know that, I just don't want to have to bring her body back to SHEILD, there's no telling what they might do to me, let alone what the All Father has in store."

"It is more than that though, isn't it?" asked Thor.

"More? What more?" said Loki, irritably. "She is a Midgardian. She is in my charge and she is missing."

"She is an attractive Midgardian who you have been working closely with this last fortnight," wheedled Thor, heedless of Loki's annoyance.

"What of it?" asked Loki. "Many Midgardians are attractive," he grumbled.

"Come brother, you like her, don't you?" asked Thor with a wide smile.

"Rrrr! Of course I like her," Loki snapped. "She is irreverent and playful, she is wickedly clever and she draws on a vast spectrum of knowledge about Midgardian culture both for serious and ridiculous purposes." He sighed and sat on a rock. "She doesn't treat me like a prince. That's something I never thought I would actually enjoy. And she doesn't treat me like an intergalactic criminal psychopath either," he said, shifting his gaze off into the frozen landscape, then added in a low voice, "Which she would have been well within her rights to do." He folded his arms and rested them on his knees, glaring at the ground now and looking quite defeated.

Thor came closer and clapped him on the shoulder. "Come, we shall go back to the palace, the lady Darcy is clever. Not as clever as Jane Foster, but more clever than most. I have faith she will get a message to us somehow."

Loki looked up at Thor like he was crazy. The likelihood of that was astronomical. He didn't see what else he could do however and stood. He even allowed Thor to grab him around the shoulders and fly them together into town.


	11. Chapter 11

Author's note: I have posted an E rated version of this chapter on Archive of our own and have posted it as a separate work. If you are interested, I have titled it, using my logical brain, as "Vote for Bergelmir 1.2"

Darcy and several Jotnar sat in what she could only describe as a dive bar. It had walls made of rock, old planks and the ubiquitous ice that made up everything in this realm. They were drinking something local that her students had assured her she would find palatable and indeed, it wasn't bad, kind of like gin. She figured it too was probably made from some bitter shrub berries. They were also having a pretty good time. Her tactic of blaming Loki for and making snide remarks about him had won her to their side and they had reached an entente. Now they were regaling her with stories about the royal family of Jotunheim, some bawdier than others, but all hilariously funny. She guessed royalty was the same everywhere.

After a few rounds, Darcy decided it was her turn to go get drinks and one of the females from her class came along. Darcy had been calling her Melinda. "So," she said as they waited for the bartender to make their rather large order, "What's the story with you and 'King Loki'?"

Darcy sighed, "I don't know. At this point we're friendly and flirty, but he keeps saying he doesn't like me, that he just wants me for sex."

"That's rude. He said that?" she snorted with laughter and said, sarcastically, "Smooth."

"I know, right? I'm supposed to go to bed with someone who won't admit to even liking me? Which I _think_ he does, he's laughed at my jokes and done me favors, he translated all these Russian articles for my term paper."

"I see," said the Jotunn.

"It's not like I want a full on relationship, but I at least want it to be honest, whatever it is."

"That's fair. He seems a bit cold, even to me," she joked.

"Well, I think that's just his persona here. He can heat up, trust me," said Darcy.

'Melinda' laughed again, "I can see you want him too, but be strong. He can't get something without giving something in return. Make him admit it, at least."

"I think I will," said Darcy. "Hey, maybe tonight's the night, these Jotul-shots are strong!"

"Not as strong as thousand year old mead," said a voice from behind her. Darcy spun around and though she wasn't that drunk, it took her a moment to recognize who she was seeing.

"Hey Goldilocks, what are you doing here?" she exclaimed, smiling brightly. It was Thor, covered in a cloak, the hood covering said golden locks. He was standing there smiling indulgently. "You never came back! Jane was super pissed you owe her a huge apology," she said, punching his arm.

"I know, and I am sorry," he said. "Lady Darcy, my brother has been looking for you for some time, he did not come in, preferring not to mingle with his subjects. I must return you to the palace."

"What? I'm just having some drinks with my class, no harm done," she said.

"Darcy, he is very worried, please come with me," he insisted.

"Oh fine," she said and they headed out the door. Darcy stopped to say goodbye to her class and tapped her sleeping mercenary on the shouldering saying, "Come on, Bob." Turning back to Thor as the three trouped outside she said, "I call him Bob, I've never been good with glottal stops." Thor ahhed and they trudged through the snow in silence for a while before Darcy asked, "So wait, how did _you_ know where I was?"

"I didn't. I went into that tavern for dinner!" he laughed.

After dropping off Bob and assuring him they would explain it all to 'King Loki' so that he didn't get into trouble, Darcy and Thor entered the bedchamber giggling.

"Where the fuck have you been?" shouted the irate God of Mischief who had turned over a frozen chair on his way toward them.

"I-"

"Don't say a word!," he cut her off, furiously. "How dare you come back here laughing after having been gone for four hours? Where was she?" he growled at Thor.

"I found her in a tavern, brother. Truly I think she was in little danger." Thor said, trying to calm Loki down.

"Little danger!" he sneered. "In a tavern filled with Jotunns!"

"They prefer Jotnar…" Darcy said from off to the side, earning her a glare from Loki that would have melted the room if it had needed it. He turned with forced calmness to Thor and said, "Thank you for returning her, Thor. I will see you soon." He was silent after this and Thor took the hint slowly.

He turned to Darcy and said, "Well then, Lady Darcy, I shall leave you. Good night. Good night, brother," he said, turning again to Loki before exiting quickly.

Loki slammed the door behind him and turned on her. "I sent emissaries out for you, where have you been all this time?" he asked, harshly.

"In a bar like two blocks from the palace! I was just having a drink with my class," she explained.

"They are not your friends, Darcy, they are ruthless, soulless monsters out for blood, and out to destroy me in any way available to them and if you can't see that taking you would be a way to get to me then you're much stupider than I thought."

"They're just people, Loki. They're just like you-" she started, brain not fully grasping his anger in its buzzed state.

"They are nothing like me! I am NOT A MONSTER!" he shouted.

"Loki, they aren't monsters, or they don't have to be. I just spent a whole evening with them, they're actually pretty fun," she said.

"Don't make light of this, you were just saved you from certain doom," he said.

"Certain doom? I was saved from an evening with friends," she said.

"Again, not your friends," he groused.

"Oh, shut up," she said.

"You shut up, you could have been seriously harmed," he said, sternly, a hint of desperation in his eyes.

"Oh my god!" said Darcy, realizing something. "Oh. my. god. You were frantic!" she said, smiling. "You thought I had been boiled up for soup or cooked into a pie or something, didn't you?"

"You are drunk and I'm going to ignore that remark,"

"Yeah? Ignore this," said Darcy, her buzz emboldening her. She strolled away from him taking off her fur cloak and tossing it onto the bed where it nearly disappeared by virtue of being camouflaged. She took off the hat and it followed. She took off her sweater, her top, and her camisole, leaving her only in a bra. Loki was watching, riveted. She began removing her snowsuit pants before saying. "That would probably have had more effect had I not just had to go through all those layers. But the point is you like me. You were worried about me. And it's not just 'desire.' You like being around me, I knew it!" she said triumphantly and padded towards him standing as close as possible without touching him and she tilted her head back, her nose nearly hitting his chin, and looked him in the eye. "And you can't have me until you admit it."

"I could you know," he said in a low voice, looking around the room as if to remind her of their surroundings and his superior power.

"Yeah, but you're 'not a monster,' " she taunted.

He looked down at her glaring, his breathing shallow. He looked as if he very much wanted to be a monster. It was at least a minute as he labored over the idea in his head, she could tell by his seething, Then his lips formed a snarl and he said, "Fine. I like you," he said, placing a cool hand on her naked back and another on her neck, "Now, will you consent to my bedding you?"

It was, after all, exactly what she had asked for and he was looking desperately sexy with that peeved look gracing his sharp features.

"Okay," she said, smiling. He was on her in an instant, kissing her hard and walking the two of them backwards until they reached the bed. He shoved her on it none too gently and magicked off his clothes.

Before she could get a good look at him he had pinned her on the furs and was kissing his way down her neck. She laced her hands into his hair as he straddled her at the waist resting just enough of his weight on her to keep her in place and began doing delightful things with his hands and mouth on her chest.

"I don't want to put you off because what you're doing is amazing," said Darcy, "But this cold is more ice-cube-making than titillating, so can we get under the covers please?"

"Are you suggesting I'm not able to warm you up?" he asked, miffed.

"All other things being equal, I'm sure you're a pro, but 'other things' are Jotunheim weather at the moment, so will you please swallow your pride and get us under the furs?" she implored him.

For once he did as he was told with no more argument and they settled under the furs, him resting his weight on her and settling his hardness between her legs, returning his lips to hers. For all he claimed not to be a monster, Loki was proving to be a beast in the sack, he was overwhelming in his attention to the parts of her that needed him most. Once he started thrusting into her in earnest, he had her moaning her release in record time, her breath turning to mist in the cold air of the room.

Afterward, as they lay back in the furs after catching their breath, Loki said, "I meant to tell you, you did very well this week. I need to thank you, I genuinely could not have done it without you. At least, not as quickly. Or without any bloodshed," he added.

His reminder that she was in bed with a megalomaniac rather killed the moment.

"Thanks for that, but I think it might be better if you don't talk," said Darcy.

"What? How dare you-" he began.

"Puny Midgardian, yeah I get the picture," she cut him off and Loki smiled in spite of himself.

"Well, anyhow I know a lot more about democracy now which could come in handy," he said, resting on one elbow and trailing his fingers along the skin of her arm. "Perhaps I'll try to take over the Earth legally next time…" he trailed off.

"That would never work. But there's still plenty more to learn. I never did get around to showing you _1776_ , or that movie where Warren Beatty raps."

"Lucky me," he said. "Perhaps I'll drop by Midgard for a weekend democracy refresher course."

"Happy Independence Day to me," said Darcy, pulling him down for another round.

Two months later after Melinda, the other Jotuns from Darcy's class and even Bob had set up night classes on democracy for all eligible voters in their regions, town criers throughout Jotunheim could be heard to shout the message: "King Loki, son of Laufey, has abdicated the throne, a general election will be held in six weeks' time."

Author's end note:

There you have it. It's been so much fun playing with these two, especially writing the dialogue, which I hope was in character. Thanks for all the comments and kudos! BTW, I have another fic about these two ( _not_ a sequel) in the works so if you liked this one, look for it soon-ish.


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